💌: This method will help you have better conversations

Hi friends,

I've been on a learning streak recently and decided to sign up for Vinh Giang's Mastering The Art of Conversation class.

I've been following him on socials and he's been the only one who consistently puts out content that makes me excited to try new ways to improve my speaking and communication skills.

I wanted to share a key learning that can help level up the quality of your conversations with friends, coworkers, or strangers. This comes in especially useful when you somehow find yourself in a party with a bunch of people you don’t know.

Here’s the framework: P-A-R-A.

That stands for Point, Action, Result, Ask.

Point - What's the point you're trying to make?

Action - What action did you take from this point?

Result - How has this action impacted you?

Ask - Ask a question to the group / person you're talking to about their experience with this point

When this is useful: When you're trying to jump into a conversation midway and want to succinctly communicate a meaningful point + continue the conversation.

Here’s how it works:

Say your friends are talking about music.

Point: Folks. Have ya’ll heard Claude Debussy's new drop, Clair de lune? It's a banger.

Action: I listen to it everyday, it's the perfect wind-down routine after work.

Result: It's really relaxing, especially when it's playing in the background as I'm reading.

Ask: Do any of you have any similar types of music that you can recommend?

You get it.

Vinh gave a work-related scenario as well (of course it’s about AI):

Point: AI is so important these days, and I think we should lean more into it and try to incorporate the technologies into our processes.

Action: Recently, I've used Calendly, which is an AI-powered scheduling tool to help automate the scheduling process of my client appointments.

Result: It was incredible. What used to take us 5 hours can now be done in 30 mins, and Calendly just does everything for us! If say, a client missed an appointment, we can quickly update it and Calendly will suggest a new timing automatically to the client.

Ask - Stephanie (the manager), do you think I can run a 30 mins workshop to help everyone set up Calendly on their computers? It's quick and easy, and I think could really save the team a whole lot of hours.

Wonderful. Now Stephanie likes you more because you’re sharing and adding value to the team with helpful suggestions. Jokes aside, I like that it takes the jumble of thoughts in our head and pipes it through this nice, little structure that allows us to share what we learned, which helps us connect with others, and engages others with a follow-up question as well.

It’s like ping-pong. You give and you take.

As with any method, you have to try it to know if it works for you. I know I will 🙂

Happy lives,

💌 Gladys